Michael’s Blog

I’ve been listening to “Field Notes from a Catastrophe” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Quite a contrast to “State of Fear” and somewhat more convincing. The question of CO2 in the atmosphere is definitely looking like the biggest problem that has ever faced mankind and it isn’t just going to go away.
It strikes me that convincing the world not to use fossil fuels is going to be really tough. If you want to achieve something like this a better, for whatever reason, alternative has to be presented. Having travelled in the deserts of the U.S. south west I cannot believe that all that solar energy that beats down on that huge area almost every day is not the solution to the atmospheric carbon accumulation problem. Not to mention all the other hot deserts in the world.
Just considering Arizona for example. I figure (and I could be wrong) that sunlight in that part of the world produces an average of almost 5Mw/ square meter/year. The area of Arizona is 114,000 sq miles or 2,589,990 sq meters so the energy falling on Arizona is something like 12.95 Terawatt hours (12,950,000,000 kilowatt hours) which, as I figure it, is about 60% of the total energy used in the US annually. That’s all the energy not just the electricity.  Now I have gone over the math but would appreciate anyone pointing out any errors.
So all we have to do is cover most of the south west with 100% efficient solar cells and the problem is solved with energy to burn so to speak. Of course there could be a few issues, like how to make photovoltaic cells more than the 24.7% efficiency the best of them are now (most are less than 10%) but for heavens sake the U.S. has spent something like $100 billion…yes billion on the Star Wars Missile Defense System and it still doesn’t work.  If they just could figure out how to spend that sort of money on solving the greenhouse gas problems we just might come up with a solution.
Here’s an idea …….what if everyone in the world paid a 5% premium to purchase fossil fuel generated electricity or to purchase fossil derived fuels. Just 5%, that’s not much like $0.04 on a liter of gas, everyone, no exceptions. Heck the U.S. spends $3,000,000,000,000 per year on oil imports…$3 TRILLION with a “T”.  5% of that would be $150 billion and that’s just the imported oil. Wave that sort of money in front of industry and see what they can come up with.

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After a 2 year hiatus I have decided to enter the Targa Newfoundland again in 2007. We (Dick Paterson and I) had a disastrous start to our Targa career when we crashed my 100S into the remnants of a Volvo P1800 which had crashed ahead of us. You can read all about the preparations of the replacement car. (I have vowed never to compete in the 100S again) here http://www.acmefluid.com.au/larry/ahx12.html AHX12, the replacement car, I drove in 2003 and 2004 with Blair Harber, the owner, did pretty well. Finishing in itself is something of an achievement in Targa Newfoundland, and in both of those years we managed to get a finishing silver plate.   To keep people coming back Targa Newfoundland, and most other events of this type, award a more prestigious award when you finish a certain number of events. In TN for example, 3 consecutive finishes produces a gold plate. I’m assured that in this case “consecutive” means finishes which are not interrupted by a DNF, or a Targa where you failed to collect a silver plate and that not entering for a year or to does not disqualify one.   

So…. After 2 silvers AHX12 should be eligible a gold plate if we manage to complete the course in ’07. Dick and I ran AHX12 at Watkins Glen in the Australia / U.S. Healey Challenge in 2005. There were some very fast cars in that event and AHX12, being set up for rallying was something of a handful. Dick managed to loop the car several times on the main straight when it got loose under braking in the wet. Unfortunately I didn’t see it but from his description and the way he was waving his arms around it must have been quite an “occasion “. I came very close to doing the same thing in the left hander heading down into the boot but just managed to gather things up before the back overtook the front and things got really out of hand. I had noticed that driving the car at speed down a slightly twisty section did give one the impression that you were driving along the top of a hand rail or something. After a lot of measuring and running the suspension up and down with gauges on it I think I have figured out the cause. The half elliptic rear springs are slightly curved at the normal ride on this car. We have raised the ride height by about 1” because of the rough roads in Newfoundland. The problem with this is that as the car leans over the spring on the outside straightens and despite the radius arms tends to push the axle back on that side while the inside spring shortens and moves that side of the axle forward. This is called “bump steer” and results in some very rapid oversteer which means that the car turns into the corner much more than the driver  intended by his steering wheel input. There are many ways to minimize this but, with the very limited axle travel available on a Healey 100, correcting the problem without lowering the car back to its “design” ride height is a substantial challenge. 

More later  

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I wrote this article in September 2002 after returning from the first Targa Newfoundland.

TARGA SAGA

When the Targa Newfoundland was first announced in June 2002, I was immediately interested in competing in my Austin Healey 100S. I have owned my 100S, Serial # AHS3903 and one of only 55 built since 1983, but I have not been able to use it much. I had built it up as a competition car and, as a result, it did not make a great road car. The restoration of 3903 from a total derelict took more than six years and was completed just in time for the 1990 Healey Challenge Series. Although I enjoyed circuit racing the 100S, I found my Bugeye more fun to race and a lot less expensive. The 100S was put into retirement, emerging for the occasional show or meet.

When the Targa Newfoundland was announced, I discussed the associated risks with my wife, Judy. Always tolerant and very supportive, Judy agreed that the car was built for such an event. We both agreed that the blood sweat and tears that had gone into the restoration would be sufficient incentive to ensure that I would not take unnecessary risks.

In Targa rallying, the specifications for classic cars are extremely comprehensive, and 3903, having not seen competition for more than 10 years, needed a lot of preparation. My long-time buddy Dick Paterson, an accomplished racer himself, barely hesitated when I asked him to co-drive the Targa so, with one major decision behind us, we set about putting the car in shape. With only 50 days until the event, we rebuilt the engine, brakes, front suspension, gearbox and diff, fitted Weber carbs and a special exhaust system, modified and re installed the roll bar, extinguisher system, and heavy duty front and rear anti sway bars, made and installed special racing seats, replaced the fuel tank and some of the fuel connections, installed air horns, a special period headlight flash stalk, a Brantz Pro 2 tripmeter, my own design of next-turn indicator, new Yokohama tires, five point harnesses, intercom system and roll bar padding, fitted a pair of NOS SLR700 driving lamps on special brackets, and attended to a host of other small details, all without drilling any new holes in the car.

By the beginning of September, after seven weeks of preparation and several shakedown runs, we were confident that we had a safe and competitive car. By an amazing coincidence, as this work was proceeding, my Parts Manager, Van Worsdale, won an entry to Targa Newfoundland. While he and his wife, June, were anxious to participate, they did not have a suitable car but, as luck would have it, I was able to lend them my 1965 Mini Cooper, guaranteeing them a berth in the trials section of the Targa. In another bit of luck, the organizing committee wanted to have 3903 on show at their inaugural event and, to ensure it would be there, they offered to ship both 3903 and the Cooper to Newfoundland and back, free of charge. The cars left by truck on September 9th, while Dick and I hopped a milk run for St. John’s, Newfoundland.

We arrived on Friday the13th, a superstition I had never put much stock in. When we got there, 3903 and the Mini were already inside the huge Mile One Arena, and we set about cleaning the cars and installing the sponsor decals. We were a little disappointed to find that there were fewer than 50 entries at an event that was expected to attract some 200. We were also quick to note that there was some awesome competition, including a 1939 Alfa Romeo Mille Miglia Spyder from Australia and a Viper Coupe from Detroit.

DAY 1

The first day was devoted to documentation and a car show at One Mile Stadium. As we had never entered this type of event, we took this opportunity to find out exactly what we had got ourselves into. There was a very steep learning curve, but with help and guidance from experienced ex-Targa Tasmania crews, we soon figured out that we were in a very competitive position. In this type of event, cars are classed according to age and modifications. In each “Targa” (read competitive) stage, a car is allowed a specific time to complete the stage before penalty points begin to accrue. Given its age and mods, 3903 was allowed some 20 to 30 percent more time than the modern cars and, since the only other car in our class was a 1947 Citroen, driven I might add by the local vicar, we just had to keep 3903 on the road and running to capture a top spot.

DAY 2

The first day of driving was a demonstration day around the government buildings in St John’s on a route that had previously been used for a Formula Atlantic race many years back. This was to be a driver observation day for the organizers, and an opportunity for the entrants to run their cars at speed. As we had hoped, 3903 performed flawlessly and both Dick and I were observed and “Okayed” for the event.

Some of the driving by other competitors was a bit hairy and a 1964 Falcon was almost put on its roof. Although we all got through, a couple of drivers had ‘interviews’ with the organizers regarding — their driving “techniques” as I recall.

DAY 3

This was to be the prologue day, consisting of four ’transit’ stages and two ‘Targa’ stages. A steady rain was falling and, being one of only two open cars, we were forced into our wet weather gear, but we were ready and quite comfortable.

The purpose of the Prologue was to determine starting positions for the “real” start the next day. The cars would be starting in the main event slowest first, at 60 second intervals, so we figured that there was no need to go “balls out”, as the Australians put it. The chances of our having to pass anyone, when most of the stages were less than six miles long, would be unlikely. Everything went well for the first prologue stage; no ’offs’, no snags.

The second stage got exciting when a Sunbeam Tiger, did a big ’off’ on a fast left-hand curve. No one was hurt, but the underside of car was sufficiently damaged to put them out for the week. We cruised nicely through both prologue stages with a performance that put us in eighth start position. Things were lookin’ good!!

After this day’s running, we found that we needed to install a new battery.  The capacity of the one that we had fitted wasn’t up to running the car for long periods with all the lights on, particularly as I had made and installed an oversize pulley to prevent over-speeding of the generator. We also adjusted our accessory wiring set up so that the intercom would not come on until the headlights did, thus avoiding penalty points for driving without them.

There was another big car show at Mile One that night and the locals crowded around 3903 and the Cooper. The people of Newfoundland are really fantastic. We were overwhelmed with their generosity, kindness and enthusiasm for the event. From little things like running us up to the local hardware store for some wiring connectors to inviting cold P.F.A. (People From Away) spectators into their homes for a cup of tea and scones.

DAY 4

This was the big day, as it turned out, in more ways than one; the first day of real competition. Again, 3903 was running flawlessly and although the roads were wet, the rain had stopped and the sun was threatening to come out. The first stage was a transit to get us from town out to the first “Targa” stage. When we didn’t get lost getting there, despite serious butterflies, we began to feel a true sense of optimism.  

As we arrived, we found how tricky the course could be.   Regrettably, the pace car, a brand new Jaguar X type, had crashed out in the first two kilometers resulting in some long delays. At last the stage got under way and we were to be eighth car out. 

“GO” and the red Volvo P1800 of McCrory and McCrory went out in front of us with tires spinning on wet asphalt and a howling engine that was clearly reaching the rev limiter. This produced an enquiring glance from co-driver, Dick. Our turn…..FIVE, FOUR, “The road is still wet.  I’m going to take this real easy”, THREE, “we forgot to put the video camera on, OK next stage” TWO, ONE, GO! We are off on our first “Targa”, driving hard, but with the caution necessitated by the damp road conditions. Our average speed is about 10 K.P.H. above what we needed to “clean” the stage and, according to the route book, the second half of the stage was going to open up and be much faster.

This stage was the reverse of the second (prologue) stage  of the day before, and despite having only driven the road once I could pretty well remember the turns and nature of the road. Why can’t I remember people’s names like that? We didn’t even see the Jag off the road as we passed; such was our concentration on the course ahead. Four kilometers in we came upon a fast left-right-left “S” curve. I could see the exit and remembered that there was an off camber left after the fast, swooping right.  

We entered the curve at about 100 K.P.H. We were both comfortable with our speed and the handling of the car. And then everything went wrong. Ten feet from the position of the above photo we were confronted with a racers worst nightmare.  The P1800 had, for some inexplicable reason, continued straight ahead at this corner and crashed badly. It had gone into the ditch directly below the pole (in the centre of the picture), launched into the air off a driveway culvert, bounced off a high bank beyond the driveway, spun clockwise 180 degrees, skidded down the road on its side and fallen back onto its wheels completely blocking the road ahead of us (it was still very close to this position when I took the above picture). There was a huge ditch directly to the right and the back of the Volvo was about 3 feet from a very hard looking Armco barrier to the left. We were doing 100 K.P.H. on a wet curve and had only 60 meters of clear road ahead of us. We saw the driver of the Volvo wandering up the road to the right, just a few meters from the car, there was no sign of warning triangles and his navigator father was just starting to get out of the crashed car on the side facing us!!

Despite the terrific brakes on 3903, there was just not enough adhesion or room to pull up. I can remember making about 10 decisions before the impact, but I had to aim for the rear fender of the Volvo and just hope that the navigator was smart enough to jump to the right.
There is no noise that I can remember quite as sickening as the one we heard as the two cars collided.  The 100S punted the Volvo around 180 degrees and off the road into the ditch on the right.

We were out of the car with our safety triangles in about four seconds, sprinting up the road to warn the cars behind us.  Believe it or not, after our incident one of the cars that had already started into the stage behind us went off right beside the Jag about two miles back. In the aftermath, the organizers and locals were fantastic. Everything was done for us that could possibly be done.  And our special thanks goes to Officer Roach of the St John’s division of the Newfoundland Royal Constabulary who was of immense help in arranging for the transportation and storage of 3903 and for running us back to our hotel A close examination of the car revealed that the damage was too severe to allow us to do any running repairs and continue; although not so bad that we won’t be able to have 3903 back on the road in a few months.

FINISHING

After a day of getting over our disappointment and arranging things with the organizers, we decided to accept an extremely kind offer from Van and June to use the Cooper to continue the rally. June insisted she wasn’t enjoying being bounced around in a little green box anyway. In the Cooper, we managed to run three days of competition and pretty well cleaned every stage, despite the penalties of running a kilometers rally with a very inaccurate M.P.H. speedometer and no trip meter. With 65 horsepower and 90,000 miles on it (without ever having had the head removed) the Cooper performed flawlessly. I had a fabulous time howling through the suburbs of Gander in a continuous four wheel drift and Dick gave the Viper a big scare by staying hard on his tail through the downhill twisty bits into Leading Tickles. (You should check the names of some of the towns in Newfoundland) We will be back next year, perhaps not in 3903. It was a great rally, and the hospitality and friendliness of the people of Newfoundland are very addictive, fond memories we will have forever.

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About 20 years back I started thinking about what I considered to be a completely new class of vehicle.

It seemed obvious to me that the ubiquitous pickup truck, so much a part of the American culture, was, and still is, one of the most useless vehicles ever conceived. Apparently I was not alone with these thoughts as you can read here

I really started thinking seriously about this after studying, and pricing, a flatbed truck as used by tow companies to move cars around. The idea of lifting the car more than a meter in the air so that it could be carried over the top of the differential and suspension of the flat bed seemed to be ridiculous. I figured that a much better solution would be to use a front wheel drive vehicle and carry the load on a deck between the rear wheels. At the time 1982 -5 the Chrysler Minivan was a new concept but it only sported a 4 cylinder engine which just didn’t have the power that a vehicle of the type I was envisioning would require.

I had, on a trip to the Carolinas, seen a similar type of vehicle built from of a Cadillac Eldorado but this was a pretty rough sort of rig using the original Eldorado chassis with a tray big enough to carry a car fitted where the read seats and trunk used to be.

Other projects and working for a living got in the way for many intervening years but in the late ’80s and ’90s the minivan really came of age and they were now fitted with powerful V6 engines which would be more than adequate for my purposes and I started giving the idea deeper consideration. I felt strongly that if the rear suspension were designed properly the vehicle could be made to kneel down, like a camel, for simple loading eliminating the need for loading ramps. Over the years the concept started to take shape and, after I learned how to use a good 3D CAD program I started to sketch things up.

I looked at many possibilities for the rear suspension from swing arms to lever actuated systems and everything in between. I finally hit on the idea of using air springs. These things have been around for years and are very reliable. I managed to design a suspension system which used a trailing and a leading arm on each side. I could find no information on a leading arm suspension system and had to spend quit a bit of time studying the dynamics of such a system to ensure that it would behave in the manner I required.

A couple of years ago I decided that it was time to either build the vehicle of forget about it, so build it I did. I started off with a perfectly good 1994 Dodge Caravan and had Dwight Auer cut about 1 1/2 meters out of the middle.

Because the minivan is a unibody type of construction we had to build a fairly substantial subframe inside to attach the deck to. What we did was probably overkill but I figured better safe than bent. Fortunately the fuel tank on a Caravan is easily moved forward but re-routing the fuel filler took a little time.

The deck was constructed of rectangular tubing with heavy expanded metal as the load surface.

The suspension arms pivot on the steel shafts that you can see poking out the side of the deck. Once the deck was completed the entire thing was sent off for hot dip galvanizing. This turned out to be a bit of a disaster because, despite my sending detailed instructions that the frame was to be used as an air reservoir, the galvanizers decided that they had to cut holes in every closed member for venting, which they proceeded to do with a gas torch. I managed to convince them that they had screwed up royally and they agreed to weld all the holes closed and make things good, which they did.

To get the air springs to inflate I installed the air suspension compressor from an Oldsmobile under the van floor and using a series of solenoid valves and relays managed to set things up such that I can inflate the air springs in sequence to ensure that the leading axle gets up to full pressure before the loaded ride height is trimmed using those of the rear axle.

The deck brakes are straight off the Caravan and I built an air cylinder operated compensator which adjusts the pressure to the rear brakes in proportion to the load that that axle is carrying to prevent premature lock up when unloaded.

We have been using the transporter for some time now and all the engineering is working very well. No major issues have arisen and on a trip of over 3000 km to Newfoundland hauling a Mini rally car, all its support equipment and two people with all their gear we averaged over 23 MPG (imperial).

Loading is really easy with the onboard winch and the expanded metal deck prevents the slipping and sliding issues i had with my previous trailer.

The rig remarkably easy to manouver although the turning circle is somewhat increased as a result of the extended wheelbase. Vision through the huge rear window, particularly when unloaded is fantastic and I can back up to within a few inches of a car to be loaded.

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I decided that I had better do some more checking on the root causes of the handling problems we experienced with AHX12 that I described in my previous post. I got out the old Alemite Portable Model 3064 Cross Sight Alignment System that I got from Aurora Cars way back in 1986. This is the front page of the instruction manual.

You can tell from the picture that the 3064 has a few years on it…I think that is a ‘63 Nova or something like it in the picture. Anyway I hung the gauges on the front of AHX12 and it seemed quite apparent that they were way out of calibration. I don’t have any setup instructions for the gauges but I figured that if I put them on to a pair of wheels which were mounted on the ends of the rear axle which by this time was lying on the floor next to the car and which hopefully will be straight, I should be able to “zero them in” so that is what I did.

Next I put the gauges back on the front of AHX12 and they appeared still to be out by a country mile. Well …to cut a long story short they weren’t out…it was AHX12 which was out. In our rush to get to Watkins Glen…and that is another story… we had decided to lower the front suspension a bit for track use. We only took time to do an eyeball alignment after lowering the car and as I recall thought things were toed out a bit, only to be expected after lowering the car, so we cranked the alignment in a couple of turns and off we went to The Glen.

When we got to the track things were somewhat damp during practice and both  Dick and I felt the car was a little “loose” down the straights.

In our infinite wisdom we figured that we hadn’t added enough toe in so we did our best, with no equipment, to correct this by adding a little more. This didn’t seem to change things in the wet but when the track dried up a bit the car was decidedly “twitchy” to say the least. Watch this and you will see what I mean.

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The roads in Newfoundland are somewhat rough; that is to say they are actually very rough. In the 2004 event the first turn of the Clarenville stage was a down hill right hander with a steep uphill exit. I was set up for the corner and braking hard when a huge bump, which was actually a rock poking through the road surface, appeared directly in the middle of my chosen line. I tried to judge where to momentarily release the brake pedal to lift the front of the car over the bump but that tactic just didn’t work and I managed to split AHX12’s pan. As soon as I started to accelerate up the hill we could smell oil and see smoke behind us. Fortunately the stage was only about 5 km and 12 litres of oil takes a fair while to drain through a 1 inch long crack; furthermore, as luck would have it, this was the last stage of the day so we had time to get the pan off and braized and were back in the running next morning.

We weren’t smart enough however to think to raise the front suspension a little and two days later the same thing happened at the beginning of the 30 km Leading Tickles stage. Again we pounded a rock and this time split the pan around the drain plug. We took enough time to glance under the car to see a steady stream of hot oil running from the back of the engine but I figured that if we stopped on the side of the road right there and waited until we could get help we would be out of the event so I decided to press on as fast as I could in the hope that we would finish the stage before the engine ran dry. To add to our troubles the leaking oil was being blown onto the exhaust so we were leaving a smokescreen that would prevent anyone from getting by. As we didn’t want to be responsible for holding up another competitor, we really hustled. After 20 km the smoke stopped and the oil pressure dropped to zero.

This was the last thing we wanted to see but we decided to press on sure that any second we would hear the engine’s “death rattle” as the rod bearings started to give out. Amazingly that old Austin engine just kept on sluggin’ as we drove the last 10 km, at full race speed, and managed to clean the stage with the engine sounding as good at the finish as it did at the start. Ten kilometes at race speed with not a drop of oil in the engine. Amazing what a nitrided Diesel crankshaft and Valvoline Racing 20/50 can do.

Of course we weren’t out of the woods yet. There we were stopped at the end of the stage with a huge hole in the pan and one liter of oil that we had forgotten was stowed in the trunk. As we sat on the side of the road scratching our collective heads we noticed that no more cars came through the stage and were informed by the spectators that the stage had been closed because there had been an incident, with two cars off, very close to the end. To our relief the support crew for the Pacione Team, one of the crashed cars, didn’t hesitate to come to our aid. They hailed us over to their truck and, while trying to find out what had happened to their car, helped us clean off the pan and glue the hole closed with JB Weld. They then gave us oil to top up the engine and get us on our way.                                            

That’s the TARGA SPIRIT. Thanks guys…we owe you.

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I suppose that now winter is upon us and there is a decline in road repairs we will notice that one group of the drivers, the “late mergers” or LMs will go into hibernation. These are the drivers who, when a lane ahead is closed, insist on driving right up to where the witch’s hats close their lane before trying to merge into the open lane. You know the ones; they sit there with their signal on holding up the complete line while they wait for some kind soul to let them in.

The courteous and thoughtful people, like me and all my friends, who have been respectful enough to merge into the correct lane when they passed the “LANE CLOSED AHEAD” sign 2 km back are faced with a social quandary when they come across the stopped LM. Their “good” side, often reinforced by a pitiable smile over the shoulder of the LM, says  “let the poor waif in”, whereas their “BAD” side says “let the bastard rot in hell. “ 

In this case I always let the really rotten corner of the bad side of my brain take prescience and pack up so close that I can catch the movie showing on the onboard DVD player of the SUV in front, with sound. It strikes me that there is a pretty simple solution to this traffic problem. I’ll give you the outline to my solution and ask that you submit any enhancements in the comments section below.

Here’s the plan…….. About 2 km before the merge point a sign is posted  “LANE CLOSED AHEAD MERGE LEFT NOW”. These signs are posted two or three times before a line of witches hats start appearing on the lane divider. The witch’s hats would be placed such that no car could drive into the moving lane through a gap between them and they would be solid enough that even a Hummer driver couldn’t knock one down without inflicting serious damage to his ride (my kids tell me that’s the term to be used these days).  The witch’s hats could morf into concrete barriers if necessary. In some instances the line of witches hats would then just peter out and the old system of “stupidest first” would remain but, and here’s the trick, once in a while the cars in the “you should have merged left” lane would be confronted with the welcoming face of Trevor Plod the local constable and a couple of his buddies who would issue them with a preprinted ticket for failing to merge. Once the LMs had had a couple hours to reconsider their actions and watch the nice guys whistle on by Trev would take it upon himself to direct them into the correct lane and on their way during a lull in the left lane traffic flow .

Now I understand that this might take a bit of manpower to set up and operate but, when the number of man-hours (person-hours I suppose that should be) wasted as a result of the actions of these no hopers are considered, there could be a substantial net gain, not to mention a lot less really mad drivers in traffic jams.  

The great thing about this system is that it would quickly educate the LMs that there was a significant chance that their preferred method of inflicting their “me first” attitude on the rest of us is likely to result in “me last” and, like Skinner’s mice, they would quickly get the idea.

Anybody got worthwhile enhancements to recommend before I pass this on to the appropiate authorities for ignoring?

   

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The cam we were using for the first run of AHX12 in 2002 and 2003 was designed and built especially for the engine by Dema Elgin of Elgin Cams.
We had asked Dema to build us up another more aggressive cam because we felt the dyno results on the first one he supplied produced may have been part of the reason why we only managed to get about 165 BHP from the engine.

I felt that we should, with no decrease in torque, be able to move the power band up the rev range a little and thus get closer to the 200 BHP that I felt the engine was capable of.
As it turned out the cam really didn’t have the desired results and although we managed to get up to 178 BHP after spending all day on Barry Sale’s PHP Racengine’s dyno we were unable to make the engine rev higher and the power still dropped off at anything over 5500 RPM.
During the 2003 event we started having some oil pressure problems. Sometimes it was low sometimes it was high but it was not consistent and we couldn’t establish a pattern at all. We finally put it down to dirt in the oil pressure relief valve because after we cleaned that out all was well for a while but, eventually, the problem returned and it was time to investigate further. When we pulled off the pan we found that it was filled with steel flakes and upon further examination we found that several of the cam lobes were very badly worn, and this after only about 2700 km of use.

I was some upset when that cam went south, particularly after all the trouble I had taken to install and break it in correctly and the additional expense we had incurred to use Valvoline Synthetic Race Oil but concluded that perhaps we were overstressing the lifters with the added lift.

Prior to the 2004 Targa I rebuilt the engine with the cam that Dema had originally supplied and we decided, for no particular reason to use Valvoline VR1 20/50 Race Oil. This time we had no cam problems even after the engine ran 10 km with no oil!!!

Well recently I received a copy of an article written by Keith Ansell of Foreign Parts Positively Inc. and it looks as though VR1 may have been a good decision. The general gist of the article is that the quantity of EP additives in modern engine oils is being decreased markedly because these chemicals reduce the effectiveness and eventually damage catalytic converters. This is not such a problem in modern engines with roller cams and rockers but with our old flat tappet technology this spells disaster. Fortunately it seems that the VR1 still has the higher EP content as does Redline but they seem to be the only oils which do. Keith has promised to send me an updated version of his article as soon as possible which I will post here for those interested.

With a 100S head, diesel crankshaft and Elgin cam this is pretty well a unique engine. I’ve never heard of another like it that’s for sure. After some very hard racing miles including one seizure and 10 km at race speeds with no oil the engine was due for a rebuild. The block I originally used was bored out so far that some of the repositioned head studs, required for the “S” head were very close to the cylinders. The replacement block has 3.45” bores and the stroke is still 3.996” bringing the capacity down to 2490c.c. but hopefully resolving some of the head gasket issues that have been causing some reliability problems.   

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Those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed that in my previous post I lamented the fact that we were unable to get more than about 6000 r.p.m. out of AHX12’s engine. I’ve done a lot of reading on that subject since we did those dyno tests and now have a better understanding of what we were up against and now, upon reflection, it all seems very simple. In my earlier days of “hopping up” engines, as it was called back then, we had no idea why our 750c.c. side valve Austin Seven engines would not exceed much more than 4500 r.p.m.

  Even down hill with a stiff tail wind the old bombs would top out at about 80 m.p.h. and nothing we did, short of dropping them off a cliff, would make them go any faster.  

  The general consensus among the more learned of our friends was that we had reached 3000 feet per minute average piston speed. Theories abounded as to why this number could not be exceeded but most were based around things like “the ring package would stop working” or “there would be uncontrollable blow-by” or “the rod bearings couldn’t handle anything more”. It always struck me as strange that we didn’t see a lot of evidence of this. Excessive blow-by would surely have been indicated by clouds of smoke and although we had the occasional cases of engines “putting a leg out of bed” as it was called back then that was usually because someone forgot to check the oil. 

  The engines just wouldn’t go any faster. It seems that we were somewhat off track and the real explanation is far less complex. 

  To develop power an engine has to ingest a gulp of air (which contains a bit of fuel). The force to get this air into the combustion chamber comes from the good old 15 p.s.i. (pounds per square inch) of atmospheric pressure. What the atmosphere has to do, when the inlet valve opens, is accelerate a slug of air through the port, past the valve and into the cylinder. The problem is that although that slug of air doesn’t weigh that much 15 p.s.i isn’t that much of a force. Everyone knows that the rate of acceleration is proportional to inverse of the mass being accelerated and the force accelerating it. In simple terms the old atmospheric pressure can only push so much air down that port in a given amount of time. At 6000 r.p.m. the piston moves from the top, essentially where this process begins, to the bottom, where it ends in 1/100^th of a second. That isn’t that long. Now there are a bunch of “mitigating circumstances” but when you get right down to it that is what has to happen. Things can be improved a bit by making the valves open longer and further, or cleaning out the ports and fitting bigger carburetor throats but the fact remains that 10,000r.p.m. just wasn’t going to happen on a long stroke 750c.c. side valve. Once the engine needs more air to go any faster it changes from a blower to a sucker and that is that.  We were up against the same problems with AHX12. We had pretty well doubled the power from the original 92 b.h.p. and to go much further we would have to tap Bill Gates for an engine development program loan and as far as I know he isn’t a petrol head.   

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Upon the arrival of winter the GMDS* required that the wheels with snow tires be fitted to her 1997 Dodge Stratus. In the past I have run the car up to Precision Sportscar and done the job on a hoist in the warmth of the shop. This year I thought I would save some time and do it right here in the driveway.
Of course I don’t have an impact wrench or a floor jack here but the car comes with both a wheel wrench and a jack so how hard could this be?
Turns out that changing the wheels over wasn’t a problem at all. The problem was getting the jack back into its stowage position in the trunk after the job was done. Definitely one of the worst pieces of design I have ever come across.
With the jack removed this is the scene with which one is presented when attempting this task”

Quite obvious is the keyhole shaped slot in the jack mounting bracket welded to the trunk floor. The head of the huge carriage bolt slips into the keyhole slot providing an anchored thread to hold everything down. The instructions are glued to the underside of the trunk floor panel. Doesn’t look too tough eh?

Position the carriage bolt, slip the jack into position and lock it there by extending the jack a little, then drop the wheel and other bits on top after which everything is held down with the big wing nut, which by the way has to be run down about three inches of poorly cut thread to achieve its purpose.
Well there is a problem. The position of the head of the jack is determined by the two little tabs which engage into cutouts in the jack’s base. When installed the head of the jack prevents the carriage bolt from sliding into the slot of the keyhole.

In the picture above I have done my best, by flipping the jack over and then skewing the head to the left, to make things fit, but as you can see the carriage bolt won’t even start to enter the slot of the keyhole.
I had noticed that the jack was loose in the trunk when I went to get it out and I don’t think it has ever been used or for that matter correctly installed. My first conclusion was, as usual, that I was doing something wrong and, against my better judgment, I decided to refer to the instruction sheet (real men don’t do instructions). After reading them several times, as far as I could figure, the instructions suggested that I do exactly what I was attempting to do which was proving to be impossible. By this time I was getting bloody cold in the windy -2C weather and I wanted to suggest that the person who designed this system do something to him or her self which is probably physically impossible and definitely very painful.
So I got out the handbook and took it inside to see if it was any more informative.  It wasn’t.
I thought that maybe I had the wrong type of jack, but it is the same as the one in the instructions.
So what is the problem here?  If I can’t figure out how secure the jack how is my dear wife going to manage on the side of the highway and furthermore page 122 of the handbook features this big warning.
 

My guess is that the individual who designed this installation was just too damn lazy to get off his ass and actually try to install the jack into its mount when the first cars came off the assembly line and I’m betting that there are thousands of Stratus’s and Cirrus’s out there with their jacks loose in the trunk.
I thought, just for comparative purposes I would check the jack stowage arrangement in my winter beater 1996 Subaru Outback Wagon. I had the jack out and back in correctly secured in its stowage inside 30 seconds, no carriage bolts, no wing nuts, no plates, no cover supports, you just couldn’t do it wrong.
So what does this all mean…really?
I think it is a very good illustration of why the U.S. car makers can’t sell their cars outside of North America and why they can’t compete with the imports inside.  If they can’t design a satisfactory jack stowage system then how are they doing on the rest of the car; what about the steering linkage and those brake hoses. Has anyone actually checked them in service or, like the jack stowage, do they move on to the next project and hope that any faults get picked up in a recall.
My wife’s next car won’t be a domestic.
* General Manager Domestic Services
        

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